Atrocities as the New Normal: Time to Re-Energize the “Never Again” Movement

Atrocities as the New Normal: Time to Re-Energize the “Never Again” Movement

7 Feb 2019

Human Rights Watch’s Deputy Director for Global Advocacy, Philippe Bolopion, has written an impassioned piece for more action to be taken to prevent and end atrocities. For a while after the Cold War, he argues, it seemed that the tide was turning against atrocities; the culmination of these efforts were the codification of “never again” in the “responsibility to protect” in 2005 and the establishment of the International Criminal Court a few years earlier. For a while, it seemed that the world had departed from the passivity of earlier decades. Today, however, “Atrocities the world had promised to end are the new normal.” In Myanmar, Syria and Yemen, populations face daily atrocities committed against them. Yet, the fight against atrocities is far from lost, but it requires courageous engagement by activists, diplomats, civil society leaders, and elected officials.